Var the Stick (11 page)

    So neatly accomplished! He would never have thought of that, or had the nerve to do it. Was she bold, or naive?

    "Here," she said. She handed him a bundle of clothing. Dressed, they reappraised the main camp. It occurred to Var that there should have been food at the hostel, but then he remembered that the nomads cleaned it out regularly. It took a lot of food to feed an armed camp, and the hostel food was superior to the empire mess. Otherwise they might have solved their problem readily. Their food problem.

    "I'll have to go to the main tent," she said. Var agreed, hunger making him urgent, now that their nakedness had been abated. "I'll pretend I'm somebody's daughter, and that I'm bringing food out to my family."

    Var was fearful of this audacity, but could offer nothing better. "Be careful," he said.

    He lurked in the forest near the tent, not daring to move for fear she would not be able to find him again. She disappeared into the mist.

    Then lie remembered what her motel- omment should have jogged into his head before: the entird camp was not only masculine, it was on a recognition only basis. No stranger could pass the guards particularly not a female child.

    And it was too late to stop her.

    Soli moved toward the huge tent, fascinated by its tenuous configuration though her heart beat nervously. She would have felt more confident with a pair of sticks, but had left them with Var because children especially girl children did not carry weapons here.

    A guard stood at the tent entrance. She tried to brush past him as if she belonged, but his staff came down to bar her immediately. "Who are you?" he demanded.

    She knew better than to give her real name. Hastily she invented one: "I'm Semi. My father is tired. I have to fetch some food for"

    "No Sam in this camp, girl. Id know a strange name like that, sure. What game are you playing?"

    "Sam the Sword. He just arrived. Here"

    "You're lying, child. No warrior brings his family into this camp. I'm taking you to the Master." He nudged her with the staff.

    No one else was in sight at the moment. Soil vaulted the pole, shot spoked fingers at his eyeballs, and when his head jerked back in the warrior's reflex she sliced him across the throat with the rigid side of her hand. She clipped him again as he gasped for breath, and he collapsed silently.

    He was too heavy for her to move, so she left him there and stepped inside, straightening her rumpled smock and retying her hair. She could still get the food if she acted quickly enough.

    But the morning mess was over and she did not dare pester the cook directly.

    "Kol has been attacked!" someone shouted, back at the entrance. "Search the grounds!"

    Oh oh. She hadn't gotten out in time. But her hunger still drove her. She would have to make up for her vulnerability by sheer audacity, as Sosa put it. Sosa knew how to make the best of bad situations.

    She retreated to just shy of the entrance, knowing what must happen there.

    Warriors rushed up, hauled the unconscious Kol to his feet, exclaimed. "Didn't see it happen." "Clubbed in the throat." "Spread a net he can't have gotten far."

    Then a huge man came. Soil recognized him at once: the Nameless One, master of the enemy empire. He moved like a rolling machine, shaking the ground with the force of his tread, and he was ugly. His voice was almost as bad as Var's:

    "That was a weaponless attack. The mountain has sent a spy."

    Soil didn't wait for more. She ran out of the tent and threw herself at the monster, hands outstretched.

    Surprised, he caught her by the shoulder and lifted her high, his strength appalling. "What have we here?"

    "Sir!" she cried. "Help me! A man is chasing me!"

    "A child!" he said. "A girl-child. What family?'

    "No family. Im an orphan. I came here for food."

    The Master set her down, but one hand gripped her thin shoulder with vicelike power. "The hand that struck Kol's neck would have been about the size of your hand, child. I saw the mark. You are a stranger, and I know the ways of the-mountain. You"

    She reacted even before she fully comprehended his import. Her pointed knuckles rammed into his cloak, aiming for the solar plexus as she twisted away.

    It was like hitting a wall. His belly was made of steel. "Try again, little spy," he said, laughing.

    She tried again. Her knee came up to ram hard into his crotch, and one hand struck at his neck.

    The Nameless One just stood there chuckling. His grip on her shoulder never loosened. With his free hand be tore open his own cloak.

    His torso was a grotesque mass of muscle that did not flex properly with his breathing. His neck was solid gristle.

    "Child, I know your leader's tricks. What are you doing here? Our contest was supposed to be settled by combat of champions on the plateau.

    "Sir, I-I thought he was attacking me. He moved his shaft" She searched for a suitable story. "I'm from Tribe Pan." That was Sosa's tribe, before she came to the mountain, that trained its women in weaponless combat. "I ran away. All I wanted was food."

    "Tribe Pan." He pondered. Something strangely soft crossed his brutal face. "Come with me." He let go of her and marched out of the crowd.

    No other warrior spoke. She knew better than to attempt any break now. Docilely, she followed the Weaponless.

    He entered a large private tent. There was food there; her empty stomach yeained to its aroma.

    "You are hungry eat," he said, setting the bowl of porridge before her, and a cup of milk.

    Eagerly she reached for both then fathomed the trap. Nomad table manners differed from underworld practice. Her every mannerism would betray her origin. In fact, she wasn't sure the nomads used utensils at all.

    She plunged one fist into the porridge and brought up a dripping gob. She smeared this into her mouth, wincing at its heat. She ignored the milk.

    The Nameless One did not comment.

    "I'm thirsty,"she saidafter a bit.

    Wordlessly he brought her a winebag.

    She put the nozzle to her mouth and sucked. She gagged. It was some bitter, bubbling concoction. "That isn't water!" she cried, her anguish real.

    "At Pan they have neither hostels nor home-brew?" he inquired.

    Then she realized that she had overdone it. Most nomads would know the civilized mode of eating, for the hostels had plates and forks and spoons and cups. And the truly uncivilized tribes must drink brew.

    Soil began to cry, sensing beneath this brute visage a gentle personality. It was her only recourse.

    He brought her water.

    "It doesn't make sense," he said as she drank. "Bob would not send an unversed child into the enemy heartland. That would be stupid-particularly at this time."

    Soli wondered how he had learned her chief's name. Oh they had communicated, to arrange the fight on Muse plateau.

    "Yet no ordinary child would know weaponless combat," he continued.

    She realized that somehow her very mistakes bad helped put him off. "Can I take some back to my friend?" she asked, remembering Var.

    The Nameless One looked as though he were about to ask a question, then exploded into laughter. "Take all you can carry, you gamin! May your friend feast for many days, and emerge from his orgy a happier man than I!"

    "I really do have a friend," she said, nettled at his tone. She realized that he was mocking her, supposing that she wanted it all for herself.

    He brought a bag and tossed assorted solids into it, as well as two wineskins. "Take this and get out of my camp, child. Far out. Go back to Pan they produce good women, even the barren ones. Especially those. We're at war here, and it isn't safe for you, even with your defensive skills."

    She slung the heavy sack over her shoulder and went to the exit.

    "Girl!" he called suddenly, and she jumped, afraid he had seen through her after all. Bob, the master of Helicon, was like that; he would toy with a person, seeming to agree, then take him down unexpectedly and savagely. "If you ever grow tired of wandering, seek me out again. I would take you for my daughter."

    She understood with relief that this was a fundamental compliment. And she liked this enormous, terrible man.

    "Thank you," she said. "Maybe some day you'll meet my real father. I think you would like each other."

    "You were not an orphan long, then," he murmured, chuckling again. He was horribly intelligent under that muscle. "Who is your father?"

    Suddenly she remembered that the two men had met for the Nameless One had taken the empire and her true mother from her father. She dared not give Sol's name now, for they had to be mortal enemies.

    "Thank you," she said quickly, pretending not to have heard him. "Good-bye, sir." And she ducked out of the tent.

    He let her go. No hue and cry followed, and no secret tracker either.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

    Var's body felt weak as he saw Soil come out of the thinning mist, alone. No one was following her; he let her pass him, and waited, just to be sure.

    Yet he had heard the outcry and seen the men rushing to the main tent. Its entrance was hidden from him in the fog, but he had thought he heard her voice, and the Master's. Something had happened, and he had been powerless to act or even to know. He had had to wait, clasping and unclasping his rough fingers about the two sticks his and hers nervously. If she were prisoner, what would happen next?

    She circled back silently, searching for him. Somehow she had talked her way out of it if he had not imagined the whole thing, converting other voices to those he knew. "Here," he whispered. She ran at him and shoved a heavy bag into his hands. Together they hurried away from the camp. He knew no one would trace them in this fog, and the terrain was too rough for their traces to show later.

    At the base of Muse they paused while he fished in the sack for the food he smelled. He found a wineskin and gulped greedily, squirting it into his mouth It was good, sturdy nomad beer the kind of beverage the crazies never provided. Then he got hold of a loaf of dark bread, and gnawed on it as they climbed.

    The edge of his hunger assuaged, Var worried about the fog. If it let up before they reached the top, their secret would be out. Then what would they do?

    But it held. With mutual relief they flopped on the mesa, panting. Then they emptied the bag on the ground and feasted.

    There was bread, of course. There was roasted meat. There were baked potatoes. There were apples and nuts and even some crazy chocolate. One wineskin held milk, the other the beer.

    "How," Var demanded around a mouthful, "did you get all this?"

    Soli, not really hungry because of the porridge she had already had, experimented again with the beer. She had never had any before today, and it intriged her by its very foulness. "I asked the Nameless One for it."

    Var choked, spewing potato crumbs out wastefully. "How why?"

    She gulped down another abrasive mouthful of beer repressing its determined urge to come up again, and she told him the story. "And I wish they weren't enemies," she finished. "Sol and the Nameless One-they would like each other, otherwise. Your Master is sort of nice, even though he's terrible."

    "Yes," Var murmured, thinking of his own intimate five year experience with the man. "But they aren't really enemies. The Master told me once. They were friends, but they had to fight for some reason. Sol gave the Weapon to his wife, with his bracelet and all. Because she didn't want to die, and she didn't love Sol anyway."

    She looked confused through most of that speech, having top out his inflections, but she reacted immediately to the last of it. "She did too love him!" she flared. "She was my mother!"

    Be backed away from that aspect, disturbed. "She's a good woman," he said after a moment. That seemed to mollify Soli, though he was thinking of the journey he had made with Sola. He could see the resemblance, now, between mother and daughter. But could Sola have loved anyone, to have done what she did? Jumping from man to man, and putting her body to secret service for Var him self? Surely the Master knew she had said he knew yet he allowed it. How could such a thing be explained?

    And once more he came up against the problem of his oath to Sola: to kill the man who harmed her child. What sort of a woman Sola was, or why she should be so concerned now for a child she deserted then these things had no mitigating relevance. He had sworn. How could he fight Soli now?

    "Friends," Soli said forlornly. "I could have told him."

    She gulped more beer and let out a nomhdlike belch. "Var, if we fight and I kill you then the Weaponless will go away, and she will never see him. Again." She began to cry once more.

    "We can't fight," Var said, relieved to make it official.

    The fog lifted.

    "They can see us!" Soli cried, jumping up. This was not true, for the ground remained shrouded, but the nether mists were thinning too. "They'll know. The sticks!" And she fell down again.

    "What's the matter?" Var asked, scrambling to help her.

    She rolled her head. "I feel funny." Then she vomited.

    "The beer!" Var said, angry with himself for not thinking what it would do to her. He had been sick himself, the first time he had been exposed to it. "You must have drunk a quart while we talked."

    But the bag was not down nearly that much. Soli just hung on him and heaved.

    Var grabbed a soft sugared roll and sponged off her face and front with it. "Soli, you can't be sick now. They're watching your people and mine. If we don't fight"

    "Where's my stick?" she cried hysterically. "I'll bash your humpy head in. Leave me alone!" She tried another heave, but nothing came up.

    Var held her erect, not knowing what else to do. He was afraid that if he let her go she would either collapse on the ground or stumble over the brink. Either way, it wouldn't be much of a show, and the watchers on either side would become suspicious.